DAVID BAILIN is an artist working primarily in drawing. He received his MA from Hunter College in New York and his BFA at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has received fellowship awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the NEA / Mid-American Arts Alliance as well as the Arkansas Art Council. Bailin was given a solo exhibition in 2000 at the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock and at the Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 2009. His work has been acquired by a number of public institutions including the Arkansas Art Center Foundation Collection in Little Rock, and the National Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. Bailin has received critical reviews in ARTnews, the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, the Oxford American Magazine, art Ltd and other periodicals, and was the subject of a 2008 documentary entitled “Charcoal Lines.” The 2017 International Drawing Annual 11 exhibition-in-print includes two drawings from Bailin’s Erasing series. He was selected by the Arkansas Times weekly as one of Arkansas’ Visionaries in 2014. In 2014 he participated in the 56th Annual Delta Exhibition at the Arkansas Art Center and received the prestigious Grand Award.Bailin is represented by Koplin del Rio Gallery, Seattle, WA and Boswell Mourot Fine Art, Little Rock, AR. David Bailin currently lives and works in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Reviews & Criticism

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A printed catalog is available for $50 (PDF version $5.50) through Blurb Books, you may order a signed copy through the Studio Galleryfor $55, or you may read the catalog on this page. An updated version with two additional drawings is available on Amazon.

Preview The Erasing Catalog

The Erasing • 2018Drawings by David BailinEssays by Ellis Widner and Leslie Peacock

The 2000 exhibition of the Midrash Drawings and Prophet series contains a preface by Townsend Wolfe, Director and Chief Curator of the Arkansas Arts Center, and essays by Ruth Pasquine, Collections Curator, and Warren Criswell, artist.

I don't finish drawings, I exhaust the possibilities in each rendering. I revise and rework and more than likely destroy drawings. The last couple of years, only three drawings survived. I draw until the figure and the environment have weight—plasticity and narrative. I draw until I find a hook that sustains my viewing for more than a couple of days. If that hook doesn't last, then I go back to revising. Whatever began the drawing- the studies, the images from my boxes - is started again when I pick up my piece of charcoal. Because the mark is not the idea. I have to battle what making that mark means. Does it define the outside or the inside of the object? Is it defining a texture, a contour, or a tone?

Since all of us have mark making down, we think it's automatic. At its fundamental level, a drawing is a progressively complex listing of strokes. Nothing more. To assume that you can express anything before controlling and manipulating the material is ridiculous.

That's not to say that you don't have a start. I have plenty of starts, plenty of ideas, but once you are on the paper it's a whole different game.